X-Men: First Class (2011)

X-Men: First Class Synopsis

X-Men: First Class charts the epic beginning of the X-Men saga, and reveals a secret history of famous global events. Before mutants had revealed themselves to the world, and before Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Not archenemies, they were instead at first the closest of friends, working together with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to prevent nuclear Armageddon. In the process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto’s Brotherhood and Professor X’s X-Men.

X-Men writer/producer Simon Kinberg recently explained that he sees X-Men: Apocalypse as ending a trilogy that began with First Class, “complete the stories” of young Mystique, Beast, Magneto and Professor Xavier. These comments naturally had us worried, fearing that these four integral characters would be somehow walking off into the sunset, but fortunately Kinberg has now set the record straight.

With this artifact shot, Singer’s reminding us of the importance of the First Class universe, as we’ll likely spend half of Days of Future Past in that era, where a young(er) Wolverine will have to connect to James McAvoy’s Charles Xavier so that the mutant leader will not give up on the human race, letting Magneto (Michael Fassbender) triumph.

Published over two issues back in 1981, the storyline introduced an alternate future where mutants were under persecution after the assassination of a senator and giant robots called Sentinels were created to hunt down mutants. In order to try and fix the situation, Kitty Pryde mentally travels back in time so that she can warn the X-Men about the future.

Days of Future Past is the title of a two-issue X-Men comics story arc from 1981, and the plot involved, as described by AICN, is basically like Back to the Future Part II. Kitty Pryde is warned by a future version of herself from an alternate timeline that if they don't stop a specific event

X-Men: First Class was one of the more rushed blockbuster productions in recent memory, with Matthew Vaughn signing on as director in May of 2010, just 13 months before the June 2011 release. Miraculously, it actually turned out pretty well, earning strong reviews, a whole lot of money, and of course, the inevitable plans for a sequel

You may not know this, but X-Men Origins: Wolverine was not meant to be the only solo spin-off movie for the comic book franchise. For a while Fox was also developing X-Men Origins: Magneto, which would tell the back story of the universe's most famous villains. That project never came to be, of course, but the in-development script was re-appropriated for X-Men: First Class last summer and the growth of Magneto was paralleled with the growth of Charles Xavier.

Vaughn has suggested in the past that he might want to kick off the movie with the Kennedy assassination, meaning we're in for another period film, so now we'll see if he can stick with any of those promises. It will be his first time working with Kinberg, but the guy has plenty of strong credits to his name, including the first Sherlock Holmes

Much like 2010, this year was packed with not only amazing soundtracks, but also movies that knew how to use songs to perfect effect. From the synth sounds in Drive to the insanely happy tunes in The Muppets, this year in music moments made audiences feel unending joy and devastating sadness, but it all made for great times at the cinema.

All signs are pointing to Thor, Captain America and Green Lantern getting sequels, but if there's any superhero movie from 2011 that actually truly deserves a sequel it's X-Men: First Class. Going a different direction than the other films in the franchise, the movie was a ridiculously cool period piece featuring awesome performances, particularly from Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy.

The X-Men franchise has seen many different directors, writers, and actors, but one name that has been attached to all of them is producer Lauren Shuler Donner. Ever since 2000, when Bryan Singer first brought the uncanny heroes to the big screen, Donner has been behind the scenes making it all work and in the case of X-Men: First Class, she helped the project hit it out of the park.

I don't entirely believe Lawrence when she says the atmosphere in the makeup room is like a slumber party-- that's a hell of a lot of work, and they all know it-- but she's very good at putting a positive spin on what must have been an arduous process

I am an absolute sucker for special features on Blu-rays and DVDs, but one thing I've never cared too much about is deleted scenes. While there is the occasional gem - I still can't figure out why J.J. Abrams cut the Klingons out of Star Trek - most of the scenes are fairly pointless and were left out of the final cut for a reason (it's why I'm not a big fan of studio-created "extended editions" either).

Cranston does have previous directing credits, including multiple episodes of both Breaking Bad and Malcolm in the Middle, but the new project will be the first feature he has written and directed since his film Last Chance in 1999. As for turning down X-Men, he didn’t specify what the role was, so that’s open for speculation.

Super hero movies are arriving en masse this year with four in theaters so far and one more on the way. The latest, The Green Lantern, hit screens this weekend but in brightest day and blackest night, major profits escaped his sight.

The movie's producer Bryan Singer spitballed some ideas about historical events that could come into play in an X-Men: First Class sequel, and focused on the civil rights movement as a particularly interesting story to give a mutant spin

This past weekend comic book fans were delivered a gift when, for the first time in eight years, a filmmaker crafted an excellent X-Men movie. Though the movie didn't perform exceptionally at the box office, it did get rave reviews from both critics and fans alike. There is, however, one person that isn't too thrilled about all of the reawakened X-Men love: Brett Ratner.

In what could easily be described as the worst X-Men movie opening ever, X-Men: First Class hit screens this weekend with lots of fanfare but less than super-hero results. While it nabbed the number one spot, this latest in the X-Men franchise only banked a mediocre $56 million. That's consiberably less than any of its predecessors

Actually we think X-Men: First Class is really good, but by now you’ve heard enough from us on the subject of this film. Now it’s your turn. We want to know what you think of X-Men: First Class. After you see it, come back here and sound off on the newest Marvel mutant prequel.

To help you find your way through the connections between First Class we’ve put together an infographic, detailing which parts of this new movie fit with what we’ve already learned in the others (canon) and which parts simply don’t (un-canon). Check out our infographic.

Most press conferences aren't any fun, especially when large casts are assembled before a room of reporters like a line of cows in front of a tank of piranhas. But most press conferences also don't feature a group of actors just getting wind that their movie is really good

I’m glad Hollywood is still willing to make movies like Thor and Green Lantern, but don’t be surprised when X-Men: First Class makes more money than either of them. Imagination isn’t for everyone, but X-Men: First Class walks the line between reality and fantasy well enough, that it is.

With more and more reviews pouring in for X-Men: First Class (including one from our own Katey Rich), excitement is at an all time high. The Matthew Vaughn-directed film currently has 20 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and has a 100% rating. Of course someone is eventually going to bring that number down, but for now comic book fans are pumped for the first quality X-Men movie since X2 in 2003.

Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone! Get out your BBQ tools, fire up the grill, and crack open your seventh beer of the afternoon. It’s a holiday afterall. Oh and then later in the week head to the theater for what might be one of the best movies of the summer.

Most of what we’ve seen from X-Men: First Class so far has been talking, but that ends right now. Let’s get down to the business of blowing things up, pulling them out of the water, and bamfing people death. We have clips from X-Men: First Class, nearly eight minutes all told.

Check out two of the concept art designs, including the one showing off the super-60s design of the evil lair the Hellfire Club, plus the Magneto image, below, and click on them for the full collection at Marvel.com. X-Men: First Class opens next Friday, June 3, and you will definitely be reading much, much more about it in the next week

Farmer’s Insurance has, apparently, teamed up with X-Men: First Class. In their new commercial the present a world in which they’re participating in a student exchange program with the students of Xavier’s school for the gifted. This results not only in Beast sitting around in an insurance seminar...

X-Men: First Class shouldn’t suffer just because its parent company doesn’t pay any attention to fans on the internet. The filmmakers involved have nothing to do with the lawyer-run company’s strange views on marketing. So enjoy these pretty awesome international character posters, and the next time you see Rupert Murdoch...

While the original X-Men comics have Mystique performing the beast with two backs with Azazel and giving birth to the character known as Nightcrawler, Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class seems to be going in a different direction. While Azazel is actually in the film - played by Jason Flemyng - the budding romance seems to be between Mystique and a young Hank McCoy, played by Nicholas Hoult.

When the X-Men comics first premiered in the 1960s, many connections were drawn between the mutant struggle and the civil rights movement in America. The impressive social consciousness in books seen largely as child's play was quite impressive and earned the series quite a lot of respect. When Bryan Singer directed the first X-Men live-action feature film in 2000, however...

We’ve gotten our hands on forty new images from X-Men: First Class, and in addition to giving you a high-res shot of January Jones hanging around on the couch in her bra, some of them hint at what may be hidden in the movie’s plot.

With X-Men: First Class set to be released in less than a month, the last few weeks have been littered with various teasers, clips, trailers and TV spots. Compared to the last few, this week has actually been fairly low on material, so Marvel is here to close out the week X-Men-style.

The marketing campaign for X-Men: First Class has been one of the strangest I've ever seen. While all of the trailers have been top notch, the posters have been godawful, be it the face-on-crotch posters from a few months back or this recent Photoshop disaster. Now clips are starting to come out and we can hope that they show off the superhero movie in a more positive light.

It's a lot of the same footage that was part of the Beast featurette-- those two apparently get pretty close--but there's also a great scene near the end between her and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), a preview of the mentor relationship we see between the two characters in Bryan Singer's X-Men films

It's been 5 years since the last X-Men film, and 8 years since there was one that anybody actually wanted to watch, and it's a little hard to keep track of all of those mutants and their powers, especially when the roles have all been re-cast for the sake of the prequels coming out this summer

X-Men: First Class is a superhero movie, but also a period piece. The Matthew Vaughn directed prequel is set during the sixties and sees Professor Xavier’s mutant team of heroes in their infancy, dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Since it’s set in the 60s, you’d think that might mean a fantastic opportunity for a great, period specific soundtrack. You’d expect the film to use songs from artists like The Rolling Stones

While I applauded the trailer from earlier for focusing on the fundamentals of the X-Men franchise, this one goes the other route and provides plenty of action and I must say that it is quite awesome. Check it out below.

Here’s a new poster for X-Men: First Class and, if I didn’t know for certain that it came straight from Fox, I would have assumed this was some sort of fan art and just ignored it in favor of covering something else. But no, this is an actual piece of X-Men: First Class promotional material, and what Fox has done hear qualifies as utterly indescribable.

The marketing for X-Men: First Class thus far has been fairly disappointing. From the horrendous Photoshop disasters they call posters to the repetitious trailers, the whole marketing plan seems to be based on the idea that because it's an X-Men movie people will come no matter what. Come June 3 we'll see if that strategy has paid off.

Stick around through what looks like the same trailer for some new action shots, set to the same bombastic music and ending on the same dialogue between Professor X and Magneto. I can't figure out why they're just reusing the same structure and putting in new snippets of scenes

Here's a brief word of advice to movie marketers regarding the evolution of the movie poster in the last decade or so: just because Photoshop exists, does not mean you have to overuse it. Of course it’s going to get used for some touching up and to add some neat text and whatnot

X-Men: First Class is a 20th Century Fox movie, and what that means for you as a movie fan is, they’re going to be pretty stingy when it comes to showing you anything from the movie on the internet. So here we are just a couple of months away from the movie’s release, scrabbling around for decent still photos of the movie’s mutant cast.

When the first trailer for X-Men: First Class launched in February, my reaction was fairly lukewarm, but I think everyone could agree on one thing: the scene at the very end of the trailer in which Magneto drags a submarine out of the water using his powers is pretty damn cool. Now the folks behind the film have released a new still, and while it's from the same scene, unfortunately it's not the cool looking part.

Remember the Russian-dubbed X-Men: First Class trailer that hit almost a month ago and showed off a bunch of footage we hadn't seen before? Now the English-language version of the international trailer has shown up online-- yes, it has subtitles

Up until now, the key behind the marketing for X-Men: First Class has been making sure that absolutely everyone knows that it's a prequel starring Charles Xavier before he became Professor X and Erik Lehnsherr before he became Magneto. But one of the coolest things about the film is that it will be a period piece, set in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now they are finally embracing it.

While chatting up Insidious, Byrne took the time to update us on the new X-Men film, her experience making it, her affection for how universal the X-Men world is, and even her plans for potential sequels. Check it all out in the video clip below

Now that Jennifer Lawrence has been cast as Katniss Everdeen in Gary Ross's film adaptation of The Hunger Games, the folks at Fox have a pretty solid ace up their sleeve when it comes to X-Men: First Class. After all, while Lawrence earned acclaim for her performance in Winter's Bone, many more people are going to get their first taste of the actress through the blockbuster superhero film in which she plays the shape-shifter Mystique.

For whatever reason 20th Century Fox has decided to release an X-Men: FIrst Class trailer in Russia that's far more epic, and includes way more footage, than anything we've seen for English-speaking audiences. The new trailer, which you can watch below, is entirely in Russian

I hate to speak in hyperbole, but the X-Men: First Class posters that were released last night are two of the worst that I have ever seen. From the shoddy Photoshop to crotch-heads, just about everything about them is objectionable. As a result, the last 12 hours have been filled with folks laughing derisively at the new "artwork," which generally isn't great when you're trying to release a summer blockbuster that needs to make back its budget.